Pilots form a great community and share a lot, whatever their level of qualification or ratings. Even an humble private pilot like me can discuss about aviation with a senior airline captain and understand him. Have a look at my last poll here – Who are you ? – or at the comment Pat left on the “I fly to land – A bit of introspection” post and you’ll understand what I mean. However, like in all human communities, some are… well… how to say… not playing according to the same rules.

I was recently part of a discussion in a forum where a participant started to attack someone else at personal level. No flying or vaguely aeronautical arguments, but things about ratings, qualifications, fight experience, previous occupations, and the like. I tried to moderate a bit, and got a “do you even have a license?”-like answer. Interestingly, this person took the time to list all of his ratings – and he has quite a lot of them – and flight experience.

To me, this did sound a lot like the very old “Mine is bigger than yours!” argumentation. Nothing really mature. Please discuss facts, no need to attack discussion partners at a personal level, particularly with this kind of arguments. So let me formulate a small reminder to this very seldom kind of persons:

• Except for one person in this world, there’s always someone with a bigger one. More ratings, more flight experience, more everything. If you’re the exception, please let me know what for ratings and experience you have, I’m curious.
• Unfortunately, great pilots with exemplary records, lots of ratings and immense experience get killed each and every year. Ratings and experience never made anybody invincible or knowing everything. I used to know some of them personally. Sad.

So let’s have a great aviation discussion. We certainly can talk about everything, but may be not with everybody.